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Who’s playing the toughest road schedule in the SEC?

The Associated Press preseason media poll was released Sunday. Now I know many of you don’t put a whole lot of stock in human polls. And with the arrival of the first College Football Playoff and its selection committee, the traditional polls simply don’t mean as much as they did during the BCS era (1998-2013).

But what the preseason polls can do is give us a place to start the conversation, knowing fully that where we start and where we end up could likely be the difference between night and day.

Still, it gives us a metric for today’s topic: Which SEC team is going to play the toughest road schedule this season? I have always believed there are two critical elements to evaluating the relative strength of SEC schedules year in and year out: 1) Who do you play in the other division? 2) Who do you play on the road?

There are a lot of different ways to measure the strength of a road schedule. Here’s mine: First I determined how many of the AP Top 25 each team played among their five games away from home. Then, how many of those ranked opponents are in the Top 10? I counted neutral-site games as road games.

That’s my methodology. If you don’t agree, come up with your own. I’d love to read it. You may believe that Tennessee’s four ranked road opponents with two Top 10s, trumps Texas A&M’s three ranked opponents, all in the Top 10.

But using my system and the rankings from the AP poll, here is how I ranked the road schedules for 2014:

1. Texas A&M: Three ranked teams but all three are in the Top 10 — No. 9 South Carolina, No. 2 Alabama, No. 6 Auburn.

3. Florida: Three ranked teams — No. 2 Alabama, No. 12 Georgia (Jacksonville), No. 1 Florida State — with two in the Top 10. Only school in the country that plays both Nos. 1 and 2. And both games are on the road. Ouch! I could be talked into moving the Gators to No. 2.

Too bad for Braxton, Great opportunity for JT. We have multiple fast skill position players ( this is for you tampa) to spread the wealth around. The only thing we've lost is Braxton's chance for a Heisman. Everything else is still on the table.

Tony, Good methodology. I believe the "when" is important, too. Takes some time to go through all the schedules. For UGA, going to USC early and after an off week is probably a plus on the "when" ledger. But over the 10/11-11/8 four game road trip UGA will travel about 2,000 miles. Jax will be the shortest of the four. Some years that's the Dogs' LONGEST trip. So, though quality of opponents remains to be seen, I suspect difficulty of UGA's road trek is underrated. As a Dog fan, don't need to be Munson or Dooley to have concern about that gauntlet. Interesting stuff!

Preseason SOS rankings should be taken with the same grain of salt that preseason position rankings receive.

I agree that we have to start somewhere, and that educated guesses certainly have value in determining preseason rankings. People will always complain about human opinion polls, but I am of the opinion that human CFB polls are more accurate than are computer generated rankings. I'm glad that we won't have a bunch of math nerds trying to tell us who plays the best football now that the BCS is in our rearview mirrors.

As it stand with the relatively meaningless preseason poll rankings, this is fairly close. We will see how it actually pans out. Injuries are the X factor. If you did this in the B1G, a bunch of people's road schedule difficulty just took a hit because of the Braxton Miller injury. The only thing that might save Oh-hoho is where they start off. With that cushy soft schedule they will have a hard time dropping too far. That is why preseason polls are meaningless. The injury bug is the great equalizer. You can't predict them or how whoever comes in to replace the 1st stringer will play. Crapshoot.

@DawginCO "The only thing that might save Oh-hoho is where they start off. With that cushy soft schedule they will have a hard time dropping too far."

That is quite simply not true. The Ohio State will drop lock a rock in the polls if they lose games. This complaint about preseason polls predetermining the final rankings is a myth created by people whose bias leads them to believe that their favorite team has been slighted because they failed to live up to their fans' over-exuberant preseason expectations.

The only time that preseason seeding creates a problem for CFB polls is when three or more of the top teams finishes the regular season undefeated. In that case, one or more of the undefeated teams might receive an unfair benefit from having started the season with a higher ranking. With the four team playoff system in place, even this statistical anomaly will only affect the outcome of a season when there are five or more undefeated teams at season's end.

@PaulinNH Tony is really reaching on calling a game on a neutral field a road game. Of course with the Gators not even making the Top 25, we have no idea whether he would have added it as a road game for the Dawgs as well.

The UGA/FLA game is played in JAX with a 50/50 split fan deal.....and is not played in Gainesville. If you don't think playing a team in THE SWAMP is an advantage for Florida, then I also have some prime, partly used cartel land in Mexico to sell you. And Wisconsin travels very well.

It is a road game for both Georgia and Florida. But yes, it is a road game for Florida. They travel. They stay in a motel in a city other than Gainesville. The stadium is not 95 percent of more Florida fans. YES.....it is a road game.

However, Tony's system can't be measured until the end of the year when the true top 10 and 25 is established and who had the toughest road schedule could be determined. Such predictions are as weak as a pre-season poll

You are calling me "slow on the uptake" after your original post. Very funny there, ARDawg. But I did post my post to you before reading that you finally understood the point of the article after others informed you of that point, a point that everyone else seemed to understand from actually reading the article first.

@TampGator1@ARdawg I understand and seeing how my acknowledgement of my mistake was about the 4-5th post on the thread and yesterday, I will commend you for getting better. Keep at it there guy. You'll exceed that 50 IQ level in no time at all

"But what the preseason polls can do is give us a place to start the conversation, knowing fully that where we start and where we end up could likely be the difference between night and day."........SECOND PARAGRAPH.

Again, read the article before posting to make yourself look....well....you know.

@TampGator1@ARdawg Well little Miss, there is no conversation to be started on a meaningless poll. As I pointed out earlier but, you still haven't caught up to that. It's okay, I understand. You're a lil'bit spechul

Well...call the AJC and have the article retracted, then. I personally found the article worthwhile reading based on a preseason poll. But, as Tony AGAIN wrote, polls have little meaning this year.....but it is worth taking a "pre" look at the most challenging SEC schedules based on road games. And I am not sure it gets any more challenging than playing preseason #2 Bama and preseason #1 FSU for Florida.......both on the road. And preseason #12.....Georgia on a natural field (which is always considered a road game).